Arma 3 beta update adds gigantic island of Altis

Get ready for even more ridiculous amounts of Arma 3 space to run around in, because Bohemia Interactive has added the game’s main island of Altis to the beta build today. To give you a numerical idea of how large it is, the previous island (Stratis) is 20 square kilometers in size. Altis is 270 square kilometers in size.

Designer Karel Moricky has put that into some sort of visual context by comparing the surface area to other ‘open world’ games like Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim on his blog. The upshot is, Arma 3 beta players now have a massive new surface area to construct scenarios and multiplayer missions for. There don’t seem to be any ‘official’ Bohemia ones to dip into just yet, so if you want to trek around on Altis you need to go through the game’s editor or grab something someone else has made in the Steam Workshop.

It’s a fairly hefty 2.1gb update, which should download automatically if you’re in the ‘dev branch’ of the Arma 3 beta. I think you can opt in to that through right-clicking on your beta in Steam, going to properties and then looking in the beta tab for a drop-down menu. If it just starts updating with a huge patch, then you’re already in.